Nicola Upson - An Expert in Murder

Penrose had never known anyone get the better of him in cross-examination, although privately he wondered whether the 73

unquestioned influence that Spilsbury’s opinion carried always contributed to justice.

The charm and the steel were both evident today as he sat down and took his report out of the vast bag which he took everywhere.

‘It’s a nasty one, this,’ he said, without wasting any more time on social niceties and, as he always did, affording Penrose the respect of a fellow medic. ‘The cause of death is fairly straightforward –

internal haemorrhage as a result of sharp trauma to the heart from a penetrating injury originating just below the breast bone. From the angle of the wound, I’d say that she was standing up when the weapon entered her body and that the injury was made with an upward stab – you don’t often see that – by someone a few inches taller and right-handed.’

‘Man or woman?’

‘Could be either, I’m afraid. The victim was only a couple of inches over five feet, so the height issue doesn’t help us. If she’d been wearing something a little more robust, I’d have said quite confidently that the assailant was a man, but her coat was undone and a sharp point would have gone through that dress very easily.

The tissues are quite soft, you know, and a reasonably fit woman, particularly an angry one, could have done it without a problem as long as the weapon was keen enough – which it most certainly was.’

‘Have you ever come across a hatpin used as a murder weapon before?’

‘No, Archie, and I still haven’t; that’s where it gets interesting.

The weapon you found in her body wasn’t the one that killed her

– that much I can be sure of.’

Even with all the possibilities Penrose had been considering, that one had not occurred to him. One of the few things he believed he could take for granted was suddenly removed and he felt the foundations of the case shift again beneath his feet. A feeble ‘How do you know?’ was the best he could come up with.

‘Because of the blood. No hatpin would have caused such massive internal blood loss. It wasn’t obvious immediately because there was virtually no bruising to the puncture point and no obvi-74

ous external haemorrhage, but inside it’s a different story. There was a huge amount of blood in the pleural cavity and in the area around the heart, and some had passed into the abdominal cavity along the line of penetration. Yes, it’s conceivable that a hatpin could cause enough damage to be fatal, but it would be a much slower death than was the case here and you certainly couldn’t rely on it. Once you know you’re looking at two different entries, you can see that the hatpin has taken a slightly different route from the initial thrust with the blade, but it’s only marginal and the swapping of one for the other had very little effect on the external wound itself.’

‘So what sort of weapon are we looking for?’

‘Something narrow – like I said, very little blood found its way out from the entry point – and fairly long; it would need to be at least six inches to reach the heart through the liver and diaphragm.

A nice paper knife would work, for example, if it were sharp enough – and that’s the key: there’s no drag on the tissues at the edges of the wound, so it went in and came out cleanly.’

‘How much did she suffer?’ Penrose asked, conscious that he was soon to see Elspeth’s family.

‘It would have been very quick and it’s doubtful that she knew much about it. From the damage to the wall of the heart, I’d say the assailant moved the knife around in the body once the initial wound was made, and that will have speeded up the process even more. The blood in the pericardium will have prevented the heart from pumping effectively and her blood pressure will have dropped almost instantly, before the impact of a hard and fast stab really registered. It’s likely that the shock of what had happened, together with the rapid loss of blood pressure, would override any behavioural pain response in the victim and I should think she was unconscious within a minute, perhaps less. So, depending on your point of view, this particular weapon did a lovely job. It always amazes me that more of our villains don’t favour the knife, you know. It’s a much better bet than a poker or a piece of lead piping, and so much more imaginative. And that’s something there’s no shortage of here – imagination.’

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Penrose agreed. Flicking through the post-mortem report, he found the section that dealt with the shaving of the girl’s neck, a seemingly purposeless act of defilement which, bizarrely, he found more disturbing than the fatal injury. For once, Spilsbury’s conclu-sions told him little; the tiny amount of blood indicated that the cut had been made very shortly after death had occurred, but he had already suspected that. It was pointless to ask the pathologist to speculate on its meaning, so he turned his attentions back to more material evidence. ‘Can you tell me anything else about the killer? A name would be nice, but I’ll settle for hair or clothes.’

Spilsbury smiled. ‘Well, he – let’s say he for convenience’s sake –

certainly wasn’t covered in his victim’s blood when he left the train, so you can rule out that appeal to the public. There may have been a little on his hand but not enough to make him stand out from the crowd, and there was no blood or skin under the girl’s fingernails to indicate any injuries that might arouse suspicion. The shock would have stopped her putting up much of a fight, even if he’d given her the chance to struggle. And there were no prints on the hatpin other than hers. On a more positive note,’

he continued as Penrose looked increasingly despondent, ‘there were some fibres under her nails and more in her mouth which don’t appear to match anything she was wearing so, when we’ve done more tests, I might be able to tell you what his coat or jumper was made of. My guess is that the killer pulled her towards him with his left hand – there’s a mark on the back of her neck to support that – and muffled any noises she might have made by holding her face against his chest as the knife went in. There was a lot of dust on the skirt of her dress but that’s consistent with what was on the floor of the carriage, so it tells us very little except that it’s certainly not the cleaning you pay for in first class. She must have fallen forward onto her knees when she lost consciousness, and then been lifted onto the seat where she was found: easier for a man to do that, of course, but again not impossible for a woman.

There are some pulls in her stockings and the dress is slightly torn under one arm, which could suggest that she was shifted without much care or ceremony, but it’s hardly surprising that it was done 76

in a hurry. This is one of the riskiest crimes I’ve seen – you’d need to be in and out in a matter of minutes. Anyway, I’ll let you know as soon as the tests are done on those fibres. It’s not much, but it’s all I’ve got for you at the moment. Just for once, the time of death is certain almost to the minute, but you know as much about that as I do.’

There was silence for a moment while Penrose thought about the information that Spilsbury had given him. ‘I can think of two reasons for switching the murder weapon,’ he said. ‘Either the blade that he used was so distinctive that to leave it behind would be to give himself away; or there’s something significant in what he chose to substitute it with. What would you put your money on?’

Years in court had taught Spilsbury never to volunteer his views unless asked – and Penrose asked more often than most of his colleagues – but, when he did offer an opinion, his eye for detail, acute gifts of reasoning and a memory which served as an index to death in all its forms meant that he was always worth listening to.